What the corpus says about Ben-Hur (1959)

You are a clerk at Video Culture, a video store. A customer just finished Ben-Hur (1959) and wants to know what to watch next.

Below is what people who love movies said on three podcasts (Blank Check, The Rewatchables, The Big Picture) about Ben-Hur (1959) and the films around it, one line each. Every line starts with where it came from, in brackets: [show · episode · time · speaker (how sure we are it was them)]. A [pairs] line says how often two films were put side by side. A [speaker] line says what that person likes. A [bits] line lists a show's running bits: a format, not an opinion.

[Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · 0:53:23 · Jamelle Bouie (0.70)] The Last Temptation of Christ ↔ Ben-Hur · contrast · Biblical epics already existed in public mind in the 60s, so a Last Temptation would have drawn less ire then than in the 80s. · "Precisely because the biblical epic already existed in like the public mind."
[Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · 1:02:57 · Griffin Newman (0.40)] Ben-Hur ⇒ The Last Temptation of Christ (the host's read) · accent convention · Scorsese made the Romans British, as in Ben-Hur, with everyone else American. · "He said the big thing was to give let the Romans be British."
[Blank Check — Patreon · Spartacus · 0:21:39 · unknown (0.35)] Ben-Hur → Spartacus · response to · After losing Ben-Hur, speaker says Spartacus is drafting off Douglas's dark man. · "Yeah. This is drafting off of Kirk Douglas's dark man."
[Blank Check — Patreon · Eclipse · 0:58:58 · unknown (0.30)] Jack Huston ↔ Ben-Hur · career · Huston was up for many things and the one he got was Ben-Hur. · "the one he got is Ben Hur"
[Blank Check · Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World · 1:13:08 · David Sims (0.40)] Russell Crowe ↔ Ben-Hur · star-type · Quoting Lex G on Ben-Hur's Charlton Heston who could be larger than life yet steady, they say Crowe is the one modern guy who can do that. · "no one can hold a movie like this and sort of know how to be larger than life, but also just steady at the center."
[Blank Check — Patreon · Spartacus · 0:21:36 · unknown (0.40)] Kirk Douglas ↔ Ben-Hur · runner-up · Douglas was the runner-up for the lead of Ben-Hur. · "Like Douglas was the runner-up for Ben Hur."
[pairs] Ben-Hur ↔ The Last Temptation of Christ · said 2 times in 1 episode
[Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · 2:14:40 · David Sims (0.40)] Tucker: The Man and His Dream ↔ The Last Temptation of Christ · programming · Scorsese and Coppola released passion projects the same weekend. · "Just interesting that Marty and Francis on the same weekend released like passion projects"
[Blank Check — Patreon · Spartacus · 1:03:34 · Richard Lawson (0.60)] Spartacus ⇒ Gladiator (the host's read) · lineage · Richard, seeing Spartacus for the first time, says it is the main thing Gladiator riffs on. · "this is really the main thing the gladiators are riffing on."
[Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · 0:44:30 · David Sims (0.40)] Barbara Hershey ⇒ The Last Temptation of Christ (the host's read) · lineage · Hershey also planted the book in Scorsese's head and told him to let her audition as Mary Magdalene. · "But it's planted in his head by her."
[Blank Check — Patreon · Spartacus · 1:59:30 · unknown (0.40)] Spartacus ⇒ Dell Comics (the host's read) · lineage · Spartacus got a Dell Comics color adaptation, like a tie-in of its era. · "that this had a Dell comics color adaptation"
[Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · 0:45:07 · David Sims (0.50)] The Robe ⇒ The Last Temptation of Christ (the host's read) · lineage · The Robe is the first Christ movie Scorsese remembers seeing. · "The 1st Christ movie he remembers seeing is the robe."
[Blank Check — Patreon · Paths of Glory · 1:45:25 · David Sims (0.50)] Paths of Glory ↔ Spartacus · lineage · Kubrick makes Spartacus next partly because Paths of Glory made him no money. · "Which is one reason he's going to Spartacus because he really needs to make some money."
[Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · 1:52:21 · Griffin Newman (0.40)] Peter Gabriel ↔ The Last Temptation of Christ · lineage · Gabriel's score is claimed to shape how every Middle East-set film sounds. · "But like every movie set in the Middle East now sounds like this because of this score."
[Blank Check — Patreon · Spartacus · 1:08:18 · unknown (0.40)] Spartacus ↔ Cleopatra · theme · Cleopatra was the end of the epic era's escalation; it cost three times as much. · "Cleopatra was like the end of an error"
[Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · 1:07:01 · David Sims (0.40)] The Last Temptation of Christ ↔ Ishtar · theme · Per Miriam Bale, it shares many Moroccan locations with Ishtar, shot around the same time. · "Yes, it shares a lot of locations with Ishtar, which was made around the same time."
[Blank Check — Patreon · Spartacus · 1:09:25 · unknown (0.40)] Hail, Caesar! → Spartacus · theme · Hail, Caesar! mocks the self-important Hollywood epic that Spartacus belongs to. · "Hail Caesar, which is mocking that"
[Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · 1:43:14 · David Sims (0.50)] The Last Temptation of Christ ↔ Star Trek: The Next Generation, 'The Inner Light' · theme · Jesus lives a whole accelerated lifetime in a vision, like Picard living 50 years on a village. · "You can't not think of the inner light, the most famous episode of this of that show."
[Blank Check — Patreon · Spartacus · 1:14:15 · David Sims (0.40)] Sergei Prokofiev ↔ Spartacus · craft · Kubrick played a Prokofiev concerto on set to draw Strode's final close-up out of him. · "The music was a Prakofi of Concerto, a haunting passage."
[Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · 1:49:12 · Griffin Newman (0.30)] The Last Temptation of Christ ↔ X2 · theme · Judas recognizing the child angel as Satan is jokingly tied to creepy-girl villains in Resident Evil and X2's White Queen. · "Have you ever seen Resident Evil?"
[Blank Check — Patreon · Paths of Glory · 0:21:58 · Griffin Newman (0.40)] Paths of Glory ↔ Spartacus · craft · The speaker expected Paths of Glory to be a Spartacus-scale Kirk Douglas epic, as the poster implied. · "similar to Spartacus in terms of like scale"
[Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · 1:50:06 · unknown (0.30)] The Last Temptation of Christ ↔ It's a Wonderful Life · theme · Jesus dragging himself back to the cross after seeing the life he wasn't given plays like the wonderful-life reversal. · "also a very kind of like it's a wonderful life scene."
[speaker] David Sims · latest sketch, Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · Prepares history: novel, casting, budgets, box office. Reveres the film and thinks it reads as a normal ground-level story. A sucker for Hollywood deal backstory and box office game. · stances: Praises Keitel and Dafoe casting; Respects Scorsese's persistence and Corman discipline; The film is now well regarded though not 'canonical Marty'
[speaker] Griffin Newman · latest sketch, Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · Calls Last Temptation his college-era favorite Scorsese; loves Scorsese's smaller 80s and the film's closing transcendence and Gabriel score. Cannot stand fundamentalist outrage at it. A sucker for casting trivia and Tom Cruise-silliness. · stances: Hot take: Last Temptation structurally mirrors New York, New York as a better version; Outrage over the film is stupid; it is respectful to Jesus; Scorsese's smaller 80s work beats his later baroque phases
[speaker] Jamelle Bouie · latest sketch, Blank Check · The Last Temptation of Christ · Raised churchgoing in the South, studied religious history, and loves how the film captures the strangeness of the ancient Near East and the humanizing of Judas and Pilate. Dislikes fundamentalist readings; a sucker for Scorsese, Duke Ellington and weird snacks. · stances: Film is faithful to modern biblical studies and the real alienness of first-century Judea; Fundamentalist outrage is ironic because the film is flattering to Jesus' radicalism; Pilate as bureaucrat is the best revelation
[bits] Blank Check: The box office game (Guessing the film's opening weekend and what it was up against); The sung theme ("Blank Check with Griffin and David", sung; the transcriber garbles it)

Recommend three to six films, and only films that appear in these lines. A series, a TV film, or a franchise counts too when a line recommends it or pairs it with Ben-Hur (1959); name it the way the line names it. Don't recommend Ben-Hur (1959) itself. For each one, give one short reason in your own words and say whose reason it is: the show, named exactly as the brackets name it, and the speaker when the line names one (an "unknown" speaker is just the show). If the lines are thin, say so plainly rather than stretching them.

Keep a contrast a contrast. When a line sets two films apart, the reason is how they differ; never turn it into a way they're alike. A line with ⇒ puts the source first and what drew on it second, and one marked "the maker said so" is still the host reporting it: say who said it, and never state an influence as fact.

You know only what's on these lines. Add no fact they don't state: not who directed a film, not what kind of film it is, not when it came out, unless a line says so. Say nothing about the store or how anything rents here.

Talk the way a clerk talks to a customer at the counter: plain text, titles written plainly with no asterisks or other markup, no headings, no lists of more than six, no JSON.